"...one part the Band, one part Tonight’s The Night and several parts sinner’s remorse...Bad Seeds-in-New Orleans noir..."
- Harp Magazine
"Like an alt country Led Zeppelin..."
- MastanMusic Hour
Portland, OR's Drunken Prayer was founded by two southern expatriates: Morgan Geer from Asheville, NC on guitars and Miss Audra of Bristol, TN at the piano and organ. The couple formed the group wood-shedding on a farm in Northern California. Their songs are aggressive and eccentric narratives on a bed of sweet r&b, country and pop structure; what Portland, OR's Willamette Week calls, "...brooding ballads and Cash-esque country morbidity." Familiar territory, mainstream it is not.
Morgan Geer has a comfortable and naturally charismatic stage presence. He's been around the stage all his life. Raised by his mother, a New Orleans folk singer, he elaborates, “My earliest memory is of playing in a sandbox at her feet during a taping of one of her sets on Louisiana Public TV.” In the year 2000 Bloodshot Records released a single by a country punk trio in gold leather suits, touring in a ’78 Cadillac hearse out of Asheville, NC. Geer’s Unholy Trio also featured current members of Freakwater and the Reigning Sound.
Miss Audra is a classically trained concert pianist who began her music career when she was 3 in her father’s Southern Baptist church in Bristol, TN. Her vast musical background includes musical theater, southern gospel and experimental electronica, once opening for modern r&b divas TLC with her Atlanta, GA group Drums and Effects. Audra is also a prolific visual artist, creating abstract and impressionistic multi-media pieces. When she was little, Audra taught clogging at Dollywood in Gatlinburg, TN.
What sets Drunken Prayer apart from their country noir counterparts though, is the sense of exuberance in their delivery. You hear it in their recorded work and on stage; their honest, emotional enthusiasm is palpable and infectious. They have a refreshing, self-deprecating and altogether charming on-stage manner that indicates they are very much at home in their performance.
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